A must-see — ‘Julie & Julia’

If you’re remotely interested in food — and you must be or you wouldn’t be reading this blog, right? — then you don’t want to miss “Julie & Julie.”

I saw a premiere last night and loved it. It’s everything you want a food film to be, with food so lush you want to grab it from the screen. And Meryl Streep did an amazing job portraying Julie Child.

Plan to go to dinner before or after the movie, as there’s no way you can be surrounded by that much food and not be hungry. Food, after all, is the star.

You see plenty of butter in the film — sizzling in a skillet of fish, making an appearance at Julia’s kitchen that’s moved to the Smithsonian — but there’s more to this film than just food. I adored the relationship Julia had with her husband Paul; I saw them together in real life a couple of times and it was apparent they were madly in love. The real-life relationship translates fabulously to film.

I enjoyed the Julia parts more than the Julie parts, probably because of the chemistry between Julia and her husband, but the two parts worked together amazingly well and went together seamlessly, so there were no awkward transitions from the 1950s to the 2000s.

Hopefully this movie will do more than entertain. I hope it will inspire you to get in the kitchen and cook. It doesn’t have to be anything as complicated as what’s in Julia’s “Mastering the Art of French Cooking.” Just approach it with a smidgen of the passion that Julia approached her cooking and you’re 95 percent there.